SIDNEY CHAMBERS AND THE PERSISTENCE OF LOVE by James Runcie

"Time passes for Sidney Chambers, but the cases stay familiar"

Sidney Chambers and the Persistence of Love

Posted: June 23, 2017

I discovered this book series thanks to the TV series GRANTCHESTER and this is the third book I have read, and since this is book sixth have I missed three, but that is something I'm planning to rectify.

In the first book we meet a young Sidney Chambers some years after WW2, unmarried and vicar of Grantchester. It's now the 70s and Sidney and Hildegard are married and they have a young daughter, Anna. He has risen in the ranks and is now archdeacon. But, he still can't stay away from trouble as the stories in this book will prove. This book is, as the rest I have read, divided into short stories that have different cases that Sidney takes one. And, I have to say that so far this is my favorite book in the series, all six stories are quite good with interesting cases, from murder and rape cases to Sidney's nephew going missing. And the years go by in the book. In the first story, is it early 70s and Anna is a little girl, but she is a teenager in the last story in this book.

SIDNEY CHAMBERS AND THE PERSISTENCE OF LOVE is a fabulous book. It has an interesting mix of both serious and less serious cases. I found, for instance, the rape case both infuriating and sad. Its words against words and the attitudes towards the woman in the trial are brutal. In many ways it felt like nothing has changed when it comes to rape cases: this is the 70s and she should not have been drinking and was provocatively dressed. The lawyer pretty much assumed she asked for it.

One thing I like about this book is how one get to follow the changes of time. The previous book was set in the 60s and now we have reached the 1970s where so much has changed in the world. Sidney is growing older, music like jazz is not as popular anymore and anarchism is popular among the young. It's a world that's changing and we feel it through Sidney experiences. The last story in this book is the most poignant, there is no crime in the story, but a deeply sad story that hits Sidney hard.

SIDNEY CHAMBERS AND THE PERSISTENCE OF LOVE can be read as a stand alone. But, at the same time, do I think I would recommend reading back since the books feel like a journey that started when we first meet Sidney Chambers back in the 50s. Still, one perhaps feels as I did when I finished this one and that was that I really needed to read the ones I have missed.

Book Summary

The eagerly anticipated sixth installment in the Grantchester Mysteries series, now a major PBS television series as well.

The sixth book in the James Runcie's much-loved Granchester Mystery series, which has been adapted for Masterpiece's Grantchester starring James Norton, sees full-time priest, part-time detective Sidney Chambers plunged back into sleuthing when he discovers a body in a bluebell wood.

It is May 1971 and the Cambridgeshire countryside is bursting into summer. Attending to his paternal duties, Archdeacon Sidney Chambers is walking in the woods with his daughter Anna and their aging Labrador, Byron, when they stumble upon a body. Beside the dead man lies a basket of wild flowers, all poisonous. And so it is that Sidney is thrust into another murder investigation, entering a world of hippies, folk singers, and psychedelic plants, where love triangles and permissive behavior seem to hide something darker.

Despite the tranquil appearance of the Diocese of Ely, there is much to keep Sidney and his old friend, Detective Inspector Geordie Keating, as busy as ever. An historic religious text vanishes from a Cambridge college; Sidney's former flame, Amanda Richmond, gets a whiff of art-world corruption; and his nephew disappears in the long, hot summer of 1976.

Meanwhile, Sidney comes face to face with the divine mysteries of life and love while wrestling with earthly problems--from parish scandals and an alarmingly progressive new secretary to his own domestic misdemeanors, the challenges of parenthood and a great loss.